


Heart and Hearth

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Samhain to the Solstice [26]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Lucius is unexpectedly sympathetic when Harry discovers that Grimmauld Place has burned to the ground. And he’s the one who teaches Harry to have a hearth again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, written for the request of nia_kantorka: _Either Harry needs Lucius help with something or Lucius observes Harry being in a predicament and -to his surprise- wants to help him out of it (because he knows what to do of course)._ This is the first part of two.

****Harry stood in front of the smoldering ruins of Grimmauld Place and just stared. Then he rubbed his hand over his face and looked again.

But no matter how much he looked, there was nothing he could do. His home had still burned down, and with it his books and his clothes and even Kreacher. Harry winced hardest of all at the thought of the old elf. He could hope that smoke inhalation had killed him quickly, as Harry knew from Auror work that it could, instead of leaving him to linger painfully as the fire consumed him.

“Harry?”

Hermione was touching his arm. Harry sighed and turned away. Yes, he knew there was nothing he could do. The fire that had eaten his home was magical, both Hermione and the Aurors had assured him. Whether it was deliberately set or whether Kreacher had used his failing magic to light a hearth and this had happened, Harry had no idea.

He just knew that he had to get out of here.

“Can I stay at yours tonight?” he asked Hermione in a voice hoarse with tears, and wasn’t sure when she pulled him close to her side.

“Of course.”

*

The night’s stay at Ron and Hermione’s turned into a fortnight, and Harry knew they would have been happy to put him up even longer than that. Or he could have gone to the Burrow.

But he wanted a place that was all his own. He needed a place that he could _think_. He’d got used to doing that with a glass of Firewhisky in his hand and his feet propped up on a table that Kreacher wasn’t too obsessed with cleaning, watching the flames as they danced in his hearth.

Well.

It was possible that the flames would never be part of the equation again. But Harry did need the privacy, because there was so much chaos in his head after each day as an Auror. Some of his colleagues hadn’t got over Chosen One fever, and never would. And Harry still found himself revolving his feelings about Dumbledore and Tom Riddle and the war and all the rest in his mind on a regular basis.

With Molly’s and Ron’s help, he found a small house for sale on the extreme outskirts of Hogsmeade, to the point where the village began to run into the Forbidden Forest. The owner had had trouble selling it because no one wanted to live so close to the darkness and beasts that might come out of the Forest. Harry took it for a bargain, and it was a shining place, white walls and climbing vines that he had to trim back. Inside, it had a large dining room, squashy couches that the owner didn’t want anymore, and hearths of polished wood and stone.

Harry thought everything was perfect, until he first tried to light a fire in the hearth.

The flames flared out of control, rising up so high that Harry could almost see them continuing on to consume the walls. Harry flinched back, his wand tracing defensive patterns before he remembered that this wasn’t an enemy who would be intimidated by fancy wandwork. He managed the countercharm with a croaking voice, and the flames vanished.

Harry stood there and stared at the hearth, then around at the walls that had no charms on them to keep out the winter wind.

Well. _This_ might be a problem.

*

“Excuse me, Mr. Potter, but I couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying.”

Harry stiffened, as he always did at the sound of that voice, which spoke a lot in his nightmares even now. Ron was snapping before Harry could even turn around. “What do _you_ want, Malfoy? Get out of here and stop tormenting Harry.”

“Your problem? With the fire? Not unexpected after what happened with your last home. My condolences for that. But I am sure that I can help with the problems in your new home.”

Harry studied Lucius Malfoy warily. The man had the same kind of quiet, impeccable calm that he’d had before the war. He had his hands clasped around a silver cane that was indistinguishable from the one he had been carrying at his trials, if it wasn’t the same one. He wore a silver ring set with what was probably a huge diamond on his right hand. His smile was faint and polite.

“What would you know about it?” Harry asked.

“I have been interested in many forms of magic throughout my life. The Malfoy library holds information on many more. And there is a subtle sort of emotional, sympathetic magic between a wizard and the place where he lives. The issue might arise from not considering your old house or your new one a home.”

“That’s ridiculous, Malfoy,” Ron said loudly. “Harry wasn’t even _home_ when the fire burned down Grimmauld Place. How could he have caused it?”

“I did not say that he caused it directly. I did not speak in a tone of blame.” Malfoy turned and looked at Harry as if he was shutting Ron out entirely. “I merely want to know if you thought of Grimmauld Place as home. Or this new house?”

“I haven’t had time enough in this new house to think of it yet.”

“And Grimmauld Place? I understand that you lived there some years.”

Harry crossed his arms and said nothing. The truth was, it took a _lot_ to make him consider somewhere home, which was why he’d never really thought of the Dursleys’ house that way and why he still thought of Hogwarts as the one true place he’d have liked to live, if he could. But that was private, not a story that Malfoy might sell to the papers, for all Harry knew.

“Ah,” Malfoy said, as if reading the truth from Harry’s posture with Super-Secret Evil Skills. “Well. It may be that I can tell you how to cure the problem. If you would care to visit me some evening?”

“He would _not_.”

“Would I have to come to the Manor?” Harry interrupted Ron. “There’s so many memories there…”

“Ah.” Harry would never be able to describe Malfoy’s glance as soft, not when it was so keen, but it didn’t scrape him to the bone the way he would have thought it would. “I am afraid you must, as some of the books in the library cannot be taken out of the house, and I would not wish for you to doubt what I say to you. But I can promise that we will meet in other parts of the house, away from the rooms you may find distressing.”

“Yes. Then—all right. Yes.”

“Mate, are you _insane_? Why would Malfoy want to help you?”

“You can consider it a repayment of the debt that my family assuredly owes you after the war,” Malfoy said, which made Harry flush. Malfoy had spent six months in Azkaban. Draco had spent a month, before Harry managed to present evidence from sixth year that he’d been coerced into doing most of what he did. Narcissa was living in France with Draco, the last Harry had heard, but he didn’t know why.

“I’ve already—you don’t owe me anything.”  
“I said that you _could_ consider it that way, not that it was.” Malfoy’s teeth glinted in the uncomfortable way that his eyes weren’t doing at the moment. “Shall we perhaps say tomorrow at seven, Harry?”

Harry ignored the prickle down his spine at how Malfoy addressed him, and nodded. “That will work.”

Malfoy nodded back, a deep nod that was almost a bow, and moved away. Harry watched him, and he really did seem to need the cane.

“ _Are_ you insane?”

Harry turned back to Ron and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Malfoy sounds as if he wants to help, and I want to be helped. I’m tired of not being able to light a fire in my own damn hearth, Ron.”

“But what if he hurts you?”

“He didn’t sound like he wanted to.”

“But if he does?”

“Then I can make a tradition of breaking out of Malfoy Manor,” Harry said, and found reassurance in the way his friend laughed.

*

“Welcome, Mr. Potter. Please come in.”

Harry blinked a little as he handed the cloak over to Malfoy, who had come to the door himself. He wondered for a second if Narcissa had taken the house-elves with her when she’d divorced her husband, but for all he knew, it could just be Malfoy trying to make Harry more comfortable.

Which was _still_ strange.

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said, the word automatic as he looked at the black formal robes Malfoy was wearing, and that silver cane that he did, indeed, lean on heavily as he turned to lead Harry down a corridor that he hadn’t seen before. It had heavy oak doors that closed in front of it and curling dragons, or maybe serpents, along the edges.

Malfoy glanced back at him. “It would help if you called me either Mr. Malfoy or by my first name.”

“What—why?”

“Because there are ways that I can help you with your house problem, but they depend on you being able to think of me differently. Holding me at a distance will not do that.”

Malfoy kept walking up the corridor, ignoring Harry’s stare at his back. In the end, Harry shook his head and followed. He’d done harder things in his life. He could treat Malfoy in a friendly manner if it would mean that he’d get fires to burn in his fireplaces again.

And he was _really_ getting tired of Warming Charms.

The corridor turned several times before ending in the biggest library Harry had ever seen. Shelves crowded the walls and gleamed the sort of polished color he’d never thought brown could achieve. Here and there were windows that bore sunbursts of color in the middle of them, sort of like a Muggle church, although these seemed to be all abstract designs. Malfoy motioned him to sit down in a chair facing a large window with an emerald-colored swirl of glass in the middle of it. Between that and the chair Malfoy took, with his back to the window, was a stack of books.

“These are all the books that we have which pertain to your problem,” Malfoy said, picking up the nearest one and opening it. “Have a look here, Mr. Potter.” A tap of his wand, and several sentences underlined themselves.

Harry gathered up the book and began to read. He was aware that Malfoy didn’t look away from him while he did that, but, well, putting up with some slightly creepy staring wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever done, either.

_A house that holds a wizard needs a heart. In some cases, this is the family that the wizard makes with his spouse and children. In other cases, it is the family he came from, as in the ancient houses that now hold only one member._

_But a house cannot endure when the wizard does not have either this or the perception that he belongs somewhere. The wizard must build the house’s heart again. He must do it with purpose, warmth, and dedication._

Harry looked up. “That doesn’t sound that mysterious. Wanting the house to be a home—”

“Is not enough,” Malfoy cut in. He’d laid the cane aside and lounged in his chair now like the leopard that he’d sometimes resembled when Harry bothered to look. “The sense of continuity is important, as well, which a wizard cannot achieve by will alone.”

“But—then Grimmauld Place would have burned down right after the war. I’ve never really felt at home there.”

“Immediately after the war, did you have your friends staying over with you?”

Harry paused, then nodded. “Ron and Hermione spent a lot of time with me because—well, Mrs. Weasley was mourning Fred, and she wanted them to get married right away, probably because the wedding would have distracted her, and they just wanted to get away from everything for a while.”

“Ah.” Malfoy looked fleetingly uncomfortable at the reference to Fred, but it passed, and he leaned forwards again. “Listen. The heart of the home, in many ways, is the hearth. While you do not feel as if your home has a heart, fires will refuse to light.” He picked up another book, this one bound in something that felt suspiciously like dragonhide, and gave it to Harry. Harry ignored the way that he focused on Malfoy’s hands for a second. He had a thing for hands, sometimes. It didn’t mean he would ever do anything inappropriate because of it.

_Fire was once used to destroy old wizarding houses that a family was preparing to abandon, so that no enemies of the family could move into the house and use it as a base against them. This came to be regarded as a superstition, and at last old homes were sold instead of destroyed. But recent experimentation by…_

Harry skimmed the long list of names that were probably prominent research wizards, none of whom he’d heard of, and picked it up again halfway down the page.

… _has shown that this superstition is in fact true. Fires burn tamely when lit by magic, best when lit by the sense of family within a house, out of control when lit by magic in a hearth that does not have the sense of home. It is only necessary for the wizard dwelling in the house to reach a certain critical threshold of alienation, and the burning will begin._

Harry swallowed and sat back. “That’s what happened to Grimmauld Place.”

Malfoy nodded. “You felt no connection to the Blacks who had once lived there, even if you inherited the property. In fact, you probably had a negative feeling towards the house, as it is where your godfather was imprisoned.”

Harry nodded shortly. It was true that he’d mostly tolerated living in Grimmauld Place for the last few years rather than being happy to live there. He mostly hadn’t moved somewhere else because he hadn’t had the time to concentrate on it. And then he’d broken up with Ginny, and it hadn’t seemed necessary. What did it matter where he lived, when he’d rattle around in the empty place no matter what?

“Wizarding houses pick up on the magic and the emotions of their occupants, Mr. Potter. They will free themselves from that owner by any means necessary if those connections are all negative. And if you move into a new house which you have strict neutrality towards, then fires will simply refuse to light. That is the hearth, not the fire’s or the spell’s faults.”

“So, if I built a new hearth…?”

“It would still be within the same walls and have the same problem.”

“Damn.” Harry settled back, and then started as a glass of mulled cider appeared next to him. It seemed Malfoy hadn’t lost his house-elves after all. He picked it up and sipped, sighing as the warmth seemed to work its way through his limbs. “So what are my options?”

“You can move into a place that you do feel this kind of connection with—”

“There is none.”

Malfoy paused. “None?”

Harry shook his head. “My parents’ house in Godric’s Hollow was destroyed when Voldemort attacked.” Interested, he noted that Malfoy didn’t flinch at the name. “My relatives’ house never felt like a home. I don’t have that kind of connection, and I don’t know where to go.” He winced as the last words emerged in a whisper. He’d never meant to say it that way.

Malfoy studied him in silence for some time, long enough for a plate of scones and a few delicate pots of honey and marmalade and silver knives for spreading them to appear on the table. “I see. Then I will make a recommendation I had not intended to make, given that I thought you would have other choices.”

“What recommendation?” Harry covered a scone with honey and ate it. His stomach was rumbling, which made his cheeks flush, but luckily Malfoy ignored it.

“You need someone to live with you who can help you research the Potter family and, in the meantime, give you the sense that there _is_ a connection with the house you’ve chosen. When you know enough about your family, there is a ritual that will literally transfer some of the memories and knowledge that you have into the walls. In essence, it fools the house into thinking that it’s been a home for at least one of your ancestors. It also establishes an emotional connection for you. By the time the ritual wears off, a year later, the emotional connection is genuine.”

“Who could—”

“Me.”

Harry stared at him. Malfoy, seemingly encouraged by the fact that Harry hadn’t rejected him right away, began to speak a little more rapidly.

“Hear me out. There are few people in our world with both the money and free time to do this kind of research, the expertise to find what you need, and the willingness to help you. I have all three. You may tell me all you like that I do not owe you a debt, but I feel that I do.” Malfoy hesitated for the first time. “No one outside my family has ever done for us what you did, Harry. Testifying for us, making sure that the Aurors didn’t abuse their power during house arrest, donating so that Draco could afford his school supplies during that year when the fines took all our money—”

“How did you _find out_ about that?”

“Money, when it comes back, can bribe people who were bribed once before to keep a secret, Mr. Potter.”

Harry grimaced. “Fine. But—you still don’t owe me anything.”

“I do. I would consider you honorary family if there were such a thing. Barring that, I would like to make sure that you have something as profoundly important to all wizards as a home. Let me help you, Harry. Let me give you a home and a sense of connection to your Potter ancestors and someone to come home to, for a time.”

Harry felt a vivid blush work its way up his face. “You know what people are going to say if you phrase it like that?”

Malfoy shrugged. “I’m divorced. I will be spending much of my time in either the library here, other libraries, or your home. I do not care.”

Harry hesitated. The thing was, he didn’t care that much, either. Insults and speculation still hurt—which was one reason he’d kept it quiet that he was the one paying for Draco’s school supplies—but newspaper articles weren’t something that would influence the people he really called friends and family.

In a weird way, Malfoy’s indifference placed him closer to that category than anyone else Harry could think of who wasn’t Hermione, Neville, Luna, or a Weasley.

“All right,” he said, and swallowed his scone. “Then _you_ can be the one to explain to Ron what we’re doing moving you into my house.”

Malfoy’s eyes glinted. “It will be my pleasure.” He paused.

“Yes?”

“Will you please call me Lucius?”

As much because he knew how much it had cost Malfoy to ask that as because it would make things simpler, Harry nodded. “I will.”

The smile he received was— _something_. Harry remembered that he ate more scones and they discussed arrangements, but by the time he went home, not the specifics.

He curled up under blankets covered with Warming Charms and had very, very strange dreams.

*

“But Harry, you _can’t_ let him move in with you!”

“He has already said yes, Weasley,” Lucius said in an indifferent voice. “Now, please move out of the way, or I’ll have to set the table down on top of your head, which would spoil it.”

Ron folded his arms and scowled. Harry buried his nose in the book in front of him, which described a minor ritual that he might use to help coax fire back to the hearth. It wouldn’t do anything without his feeling as if his house was a home, but at least it would mean that he was _doing_ something.

“The table or my head?”

“Either one.” Lucius conducted his furniture here and there in Harry’s house like he was standing at the head of an orchestra, and suddenly Harry found that the space that had seemed more than large enough was bursting at the seams with crystal vases and thick blankets and soft grey sofas and tiny delicate end tables. Lucius then stood on the stairs to float more furniture up there.

“But there has to be someone else you can have with you,” Ron said, still sounding as if he was appealing directly to Harry.

“There doesn’t have to be, because I am here now.”

“Malfoy is evil and is going to murder you in your sleep!”

“Strange, Weasley, I thought you were going to say that I would stab him in the back. Which is the more properly evil action, I wonder?”

“You don’t want to have someone in your house that looks like that!”

The procession of furniture came to a stop, with an enormous bed that was dripping pillows hovering over the turn of the stairs. Lucius looked at Ron and then at Harry with his eyebrows set at a forbidding angle.

Harry sighed. “He means that you would give me bad memories of Draco,” he told Lucius. He turned to Ron. “Don’t you understand that I’ve put those memories of the war _behind_ me? Or I would never have considered letting Lucius move in in the first place?” He glanced over his shoulder, and Lucius nodded at him before he returned to carefully maneuvering the bed upstairs.

In the meantime, Harry stepped close to Ron and hissed, “Shut the fuck _up_ , Ron!”

“But you told me you like them tall and slim and with pale hair!”

Despite himself, Harry had to smile. “I never put it in those words. What, been watching out for men who are my type?”

“Well, _women_ don’t work.”

Harry sighed and dragged his hand down his face. “I like women too, Ron. It’s just that I don’t have anyone right now. It’s going to be okay, you know? Lucius is going to move in and help me get the fire back into the hearth, and that’ll satisfy the debt he owes me and enable me to live comfortably in this damn place.”

“You need someone in your life. Just not a bloody _Malfoy_.”

“It’s not going to be like that.” Yeah, Harry had thought speculation might start, but he hadn’t thought it would start with his own _friends_. “He’s helping me out. Did you or did you not see that entire separate bed he just put up in my spare bedroom?”

Ron paused. Harry waited. His friend wasn’t dim or slow, just stubborn.

Ron finally nodded. “If you really want me to believe that you want him here…”

“I do.”

“And it’s not going to be devastating for you when he moves out?”

“By then, the fire will be blazing in my hearth again. That means that I won’t feel alone, because the house will be a home.”

Ron chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded. He knew better than to suggest another roommate; there weren’t a lot of people Harry trusted, and the ones who would clamor to live with him were the ones who would want to seduce him or thought they _could_ seduce him. Honestly, this was the best arrangement that could have been worked out, as far as Harry was concerned. Lucius would pay his debt, and he wouldn’t be staring at Harry with any kind of desire.

_Which is a pity._

Harry buried that thought and clapped Ron on the shoulder. “It’s all right, mate. I promise. And it’ll probably just be for a few weeks or months at most.”

“Months,” Ron muttered, then shook his head. “Well, if you’re sure that you want to do this—”

“I am.”

Ron shrugged and then abruptly embraced him hard enough that Harry staggered. “Just stay safe, mate,” Ron said in an undertone, and then turned and walked out the door before Harry could ask what the hell _that_ meant.

Harry straightened his robes and shook his head. Then he turned in time to see Lucius standing very still on the stairs. “You were supposed to handle him and make him leave us alone, you know,” he muttered.

“My apologies. I was distracted.”

Harry blinked. For a second, he thought Lucius’s eyes rested on him and _shone_ …

Then he shook his head, and Lucius asked, “Do I have your permission to widen the cupboards? It is necessary. Their capacity is _disgraceful_.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I never knew that so many of my ancestors were good at Potions.”

Lucius looked up from the other side of the wide table that now occupied the drawing room, where they had both been occupying themselves with books. “You sound wistful.”

“I’m not good at them. I’m never going to be.” Harry flipped a few pages and then sighed and shut the book. He knew already that this one was only going to depress him right now. “I’ll go out now and fly a few laps around the village.”

“I would prefer that you explain to me why you think that you will never be able to improve your scores at Potions.”

“It’s not about scores now,” Harry said, standing up. Lucius’s eyes were fixed on him. Harry had never spent enough time around him before to realize how _piercing_ those damn gazes were. “It’s about just—feeling comfortable. Feeling at ease with them. And it’s Snape, of course. I can hear his voice sneering in the back of my head every time I even think about brewing.”

“Ah.” Lucius closed his book on his finger and sat back a little. “Then you think improving at Potions is necessary in order to make the house feel like a home?”

“I didn’t say that. Just that it would be easier if I had that gift my ancestors did.”

“I can teach you.”

Harry blinked. “Potions?”

“Why not? It sounds as though you have placed some weight on it, which makes it important. Remember, Mr. Potter, the ritual to infuse the house with your connection to your ancestors depends on the way _you_ feel. Not the way someone else does, not the way that someone else thinks you should.”

Harry hesitated, his fingers tracing the glass edge of the table where it met the exquisite wooden frame. “I don’t want to ask…you’ve done so much already…”

“You truly have no idea of the magnitude of the debt I’m paying back, Harry. Let me do this.”

Harry relaxed, a little. He still didn’t like to hear Lucius talking about the debts, but at least he knew that they would make Lucius behave a certain way, and with the odd manner his heart had taken to bounding in whenever Lucius looked at him, he needed reassurance. “All right. Thank you.”

“Thank _you_.”

Lucius’s eyes took on that gleam that was even odder than the way Harry’s heart bounded, and Harry escaped to his broom before he had to figure out how good Lucius was at Legilimency and how likely he would be to see the thought drifting behind Harry’s eyes.

*

“You have never learned to be comfortable around cauldrons, have you?” Lucius asked thoughtfully the next day after their first Potions lesson.

Harry stretched his arms and rolled his neck. “Not really. I had no chance to do it during my childhood, and—”

He glanced over, found Lucius frankly staring, and averted his eyes. _He’s only staring because this shirt is Muggle,_ Harry told himself firmly. _You misinterpret everything._ He cleared his throat and managed to finish, “And then after that, the Potions classroom was always a place of danger.”

“You need to learn how to make at least some simple potions. Healing potions, hangover cures, the like.”

“I know. And I know this one was a failure,” Harry nodded at the cauldron that still had steam rising out of it where the Hair-Sleeking Potion was dissolving in a horrid lump at the bottom, “but I came closer than I would have if I was trying to brew it on my own. Thank you.”

“I wish to hear you thank me for different things.”

Harry looked up sharply. Lucius was leaning over the cauldron, eyes still fixed on him. And dilated in a way that Harry doubted had anything to do with the fumes from the failed potion.

Harry kept himself from backing away. After the war, he tried not to flinch from things that he knew other people would think were perfectly normal. Instead, he fixed a normal smile on his face and said, “Oh?”

“Yes.”

 _And normality has failed,_ Harry thought as he watched the stark emotions flaring to life on Lucius’s face. _Damn it._

“Oh,” Harry said, in a different tone this time, and watched Lucius turn away, one of his hands reaching out to deposit a fluttering touch on one of Harry’s.

*

“You seem to me to be lonely.”

Harry looked up from his book that detailed some of the legends of the founding of the Potter family that might or might not be accurate. Lucius sat in the red wingback chair in front of the fire that he preferred, his eyes as lazy as a cat’s while he looked at Harry.

“Well, it would feel that way, of course, wouldn’t it?” Harry asked, curious. “Because it’s a lonely house and you’re here to help me turn it back into a home.”

Lucius inclined his head slowly. Harry had the odd feeling that he’d not meant it that way. “I mean that you sit as though you are self-contained. Not lounging, the way I thought someone without any training in posture would. Am I mistaken and you have had more than I thought you did?”

“I think that might be your stereotypes of Gryffindors getting in the way again.”

“I don’t think so.” Lucius reached out from the chair, across the table between them, to smooth his fingers down Harry’s knuckles. “I thought someone such as you would be expansive, reaching out to the world. But you seem to be trying to hide from it.”

“I am _plenty_ bloody expansive,” Harry said, wishing his words hadn’t come out so high and breathy from the way Lucius touched him. He thought about it, then moved his hand back. With most people, he would have just snatched it, but he didn’t want to do that to Lucius. “I died to save the world. How is that not expansive?”

“There are some,” Lucius said, his voice dropping into the middle of the silence like stones being plunked into the pool, “who might say that dying is the easy choice, and living is the hard one.”

“I doubt they’ve walked to their deaths to get rid of a Horcrux,” Harry snapped, and buried his nose in his book again.

*

“Was it truly a Horcrux?”

Harry, who had been trying to relax for ten minutes in front of the fire that Lucius could light in the hearth but he couldn’t, opened an annoyed eye. Lucius had the habit of continuing conversations from the other day and expecting Harry to follow them. This once, Harry was tempted not to give in.

But Lucius stood there, gazing at him with eyes so bright that Harry couldn’t bring himself to turn him away. He sighed and sat up. “Yes. Voldemort had put a Horcrux in me the night my parents died. He didn’t mean to. It was just a tiny bit of soul. Then he destroyed it in the Forbidden Forest. I thought you knew this already?”

“Each time I heard the story told,” Lucius said, “it was from the mouth of someone who might have had other things to gain from the telling, or in circumstances that made it seem less like the truth. And I have heard it with more elaboration than that.” He sat down in the chair across from Harry and studied him. “You can speak of it so casually.”

“I had years to get used to it.”

“You knew that a Horcrux was in you for years?”

“No, I mean, years to get used to the fact that I died for it and came back.” Harry shook his head when he saw Lucius still staring at him. “It gets less remarkable when you live with it. When it’s something that already happened.”

“I don’t think that you knew you were a Horcrux for years,” Lucius whispered.

“No. I did know they existed for years. That was what I was trying to destroy during what should have been my last year at Hogwarts, the Horcruxes that tied Voldemort to life.”

Lucius narrowed his eyes as if he was listening to distant music he couldn’t make out. “So when someone told you that you had a Horcrux in your head…”

“It was Professor Snape’s memories. Dumbledore told him I was, and he left those memories so I would find out. The only way to get rid of the Horcrux in me was to let Voldemort hit me with the Killing Curse.”

“So when you found out, you marched off and committed suicide.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He’d already had this all out with Hermione years ago, on slightly different terms. “No. I was upset about it. I didn’t _want_ to. But I also knew that I didn’t have any choice if I wanted to save people and stop Voldemort. I’m sure you’ve done more than one thing you didn’t want to do in your life because it was still the best choice.”

Harry hoped that would be enough warning for Lucius to drop it. If they started talking about the war, they would have to talk about what Lucius had done as a Death Eater, and Harry didn’t want to. He just wanted to relax in front of the fire and talk idly with someone whose company he unexpectedly enjoyed.

But Lucius said, clutching his cane so hard that it looked as if he was going to break his hand, “I want to know if Dumbledore knew you would come back from that.”

“I think he suspected it. I don’t think he knew.” Harry _wasn’t_ about to discuss the vision he’d had of chatting with Dumbledore in King’s Cross. He knew it would make him sound mental.

Lucius looked away from Harry, his body edged with fine tremors. He nodded sharply, and then said, “Excuse me. I find that I must have some time to myself to recover.” He marched out of the room and up the stairs to his own bedroom.

Harry watched him go in puzzlement. _What was that all about?_ But at least the disturbing conversation was over and he could turn back and enjoy the fire.

*

“Where have you been?”

Harry opened one eye. He was lying on the couch in front of the fire again, and he thought he deserved it. He’d spent most of the last five evenings with Lucius, eating dinner, talking, and working on potions or research into Potter family history. But today he’d engaged in some intense training in the dueling rooms, then dealt with one of the “fans” who had managed to sneak past security into the Ministry and been intent on touching him in ways he didn’t like. He ached all over from the planned duels and the impromptu one.

“At work,” he said, and closed the eye again, rolling on his side so that his aching muscles got some more support from the couch cushions.

“I held dinner for you.”

Harry sighed a little. “I found it under the Warming Charm. Thank you.” He turned and buried his face in the pillows on the couch, hoping Lucius would get the hint.

“ _Why_ were you late?”

Harry sighed again, louder. “Duels,” he said, when Lucius only stood over him and refused to be chased away by the sighs. Harry could feel his heat from here, and only thought it a little odd that he could distinguish the kind of heat Lucius shed from what the fire shed. “I fought duels today for training, and then someone sneaked up on me in the Ministry and dueled me.”

“What sort of someone?”

“Someone who really wanted my autograph and hated it that I refused. Look, I’m tired and I hurt all over. Can I just _rest_? I’m sorry for missing dinner. It wasn’t my fault.”

Lucius said nothing, and then moved away. Harry sighed again, this time in relief. Then he started when, perhaps five minutes later, someone started sliding his robes down his shoulders. He sat up and swatted.

Lucius considered him through heavy-lidded eyes. “You can do that, if you wish. Or you can hold still and let me rub this ointment into your muscles. It should soothe some of the aches.”

Harry sniffed experimentally. There was a smell of valerian and some other herbs rising from the small pot of ointment in Lucius’s hands. Perhaps it would be soothing, after all. He nodded and lay back down, sighing as Lucius finished tugging his robes off. “All right. If you don’t mind…”

“I would do far more than this for you.”

Harry frowned, sure he couldn’t have heard right, and then Lucius started removing his shirt. Harry tried to sit up again. “What are you doing?”

“Do you expect me to somehow rub the ointment into your muscles _through_ the cloth?”

“Just—sort of—around it?”

Harry knew he sounded stupid, but Lucius was kind enough not to point that out. He merely said, “Harry. Let me.”

Without looking at him, Harry considered. He was lying face-down on the couch, which meant that any unfortunate reaction he had to Lucius wouldn’t be visible. It _ought_ to be okay, he thought as he swallowed with a dry mouth. In the end, he nodded and then lifted himself on his knees so that Lucius could take his trousers off, too.

It felt like a dream. He’d had so many problems with people who wanted to date him not wanting to face the press or turning out to be complete wankers that it had been a long time since he was touched like this.

And then Lucius’s hands began to rub the warmed ointment into his muscles, and Harry knew he’d been wrong. He’d never _actually_ been touched like this. So warm, so flowing, so making him _melt_. He gasped, and Lucius’s fingers stopped digging into his muscles.

“Harry?”

“I’m—a little sore, that’s all,” Harry said. “But what you’re doing still feels good.” He ended with a groan as Lucius pressed both thumbs down in the same place at once, and he felt as though something had slammed into his back.

But only for a moment. Then the tight place loosened, and Harry groaned again, this time treating the pillow to his appreciation.

“Indeed,” Lucius said, sounding softly amused, and then his fingers went back to work, prodding and smoothing.

 _I don’t see what there is to say “indeed” about,_ Harry thought crossly, but he was in the process of puddling across the cushions, so maybe his brain was a puddle, too, and there _was_ something to say indeed about, something he didn’t see or remember.

He tucked his cheek into the pillows and treated it to a symphony of sighs, while Lucius worked him up and down, and then went back to places that Harry would have sworn were more than relaxed by now. But it seemed that Lucius wasn’t convinced they were, and wanted to give them a thorough going-over.

Harry opened his eyes at one point, staring into the fire. Hazy warmth was overcoming him, and he wasn’t sure that he would remember to say it later, so he wanted to say it now.

“Lucius.”

“Hmmm?” Lucius’s hands never stopped moving, but he bent down towards Harry. Harry looked at him, but his face was a dark blur in the middle of a halo of light, the way the fire was making his hair blaze.

“Thank you. You’ve—done a lot—” Harry broke off into another gasp, and this time, he thought he saw a change come over Lucius’s face when he made the sound. But it was still too dark as it was backlit by the fire to be sure.

“Not as much as I wish to do for you.”

Harry tensed a little, but Lucius’s hands soon massaged that right out of him. He let his head loll back with a sigh. Honestly, he felt more relaxed now than he would have done if Lucius had simply let him go to sleep in front of the fire.

“Will you consider it?”

 _Were we having a conversation? I don’t remember us having a conversation._ Harry had to call a lot of himself back from a long way away to ask drowsily, “Consider what?”

“Coming home more often. Coming home _earlier_ more often. Accepting that this a place where I live, and I want your company.”

Harry nipped at his lip. He thought he would understand this better if he had more of his brain, but then Lucius’s hands moved again, and what he had left melted. He nodded even as his eyes slipped shut. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll try to—do that.”

“It may be time for me to speak with the Head Auror…”

Harry didn’t hear what he said after that, because he was asleep.

*

“I _thought_ you said you would try to come home earlier more often.”

Harry sighed as he hung up his cloak on the hook where it usually belonged and kicked off his boots. “I’m sorry, Lucius. There was another Auror who seemed all right before today, but now she’s decided that she wants to date me or something, and she’s bloody _around_ all day.”

“What is her name?”

Lucius’s voice had gone frigid. Harry peered at him. He wondered if this was something he had done wrong without realizing it, like missing the dinner the other time. “Her name? Lydia Catchkins. Why?”

Lucius swept off without answering. Harry shook his head and sat down to eat a lonely meal. No matter what Lucius thought about matters of importance, no matter what he had gone to do, Harry would rather have had his company.

*

“Lucius! What did you _do_?”

“Spend the day sitting on the couch with a book. That is something for you to roar about now?”

Harry hesitated. He’d come storming in through the front door, expecting to meet Lucius ready for battle, and instead Lucius was marking his place in the book with one finger and tilting his head a little. It made Harry feel uncivilized and uncouth.

But only until he remembered the news he’d got today, and then fire blazed through him again. “You had Lydia Catchkins sacked!”

“I merely mentioned to the Head Auror that the woman was annoying you. I wanted to have a conversation with him anyway about keeping you late because you supposedly had nothing to come home to.”

Harry blinked. Yes, he remembered that conversation with Robards. The man had insisted that because everyone else had a “family,” Harry could stay at the Ministry and conduct extra training and give lessons to the trainees. But those words, though they’d stung, had been overshadowed by the stupid duel he’d had that same day with the autograph seeker.

“Lucius…”

“I still have influence in a few places. Mostly with people who fear that I would reveal their secrets, admittedly.” Lucius put down his book and rose gracefully to his feet. “I want you to listen to me, Harry. You have a family. You have the Weasleys, and you have the memories of your ancestors that are infusing the house with greater warmth.”

He paused. Harry had the feeling that some revelation was going to follow those words, but he didn’t know what.

“And you have me.”

“Lucius…”

Lucius’s eyes and hair were both brilliant, lit by the shimmering fire, but his voice was as low and husky as burning embers. “Did you really think that I could live here with you, speak to you, eat meals with you, and feel _nothing_?”

Harry swallowed. “I—I hadn’t the slightest idea that you—that you liked men,” he said, and then felt like an idiot.

“I have found pleasure and comfort in both sexes in the past.” Lucius reached up to the buttons of his robe. Harry felt his throat become as dry and husky as Lucius’s sounded when he began to deliberately undo them. “But that was before I was married. While married, I was faithful. The stresses of the war and what came after dissolved my union with Narcissa. And now I have found you.”

“We’ve—only lived together a few months,” Harry said, eyes on Lucius’s pale shoulders and collarbones as he began to slide his robes off them.

“That is enough for me to know what I want.” Lucius shrugged, and the robes slid down around his body. He was bare, absolutely, underneath them, except for a small, modest pair of pants that Harry wouldn’t have expected him to wear. He watched Lucius’s erection curve slowly and visibly up, and was helpless to prevent himself from stirring and rising in response. “You do not have to want me in return.”

Harry said nothing, because he couldn’t.

Lucius paused and scanned his face, then gave him a thin smile. “But I think you do.” He stepped forwards and trailed his fingers along Harry’s face, down the line of his jaw to his chin, and around in circles that made Harry dizzy. “I have seen the way you look at me and then snap your gaze away again, as though you assume I would forbid you.”

“I had no idea you liked men—I didn’t want to disrupt things here or make you feel uncomfortable—”

“How unlike the daring Gryffindor you were in school.”

Harry narrowed his eyes back at Lucius, and managed to ignore the sight of his bare chest for a minute. “It’s one thing when I’m taking risks with my friends, you know. It’s another thing when I could make you uncomfortable.”

Lucius studied him for a second, and then nodded. “Yes. That excuse will do for now, if you are going to join me in bed.”

Harry had to close his eyes, and his hands shook as he reached up to his Auror robes. He was close enough to hear the slight noises as Lucius shifted his balance. They mattered more to him than the background crackle of the fire.

 _The fire._ Harry opened his eyes. “Can we make love for the first time in front of the hearth?” he asked quietly. “I think I’d like to.”

Lucius considered him for a moment with widened eyes, and Harry wondered if this was sort of pure-blood faux pas he didn’t know about. But then Lucius leaned forwards and kissed him hard enough that Harry nearly choked on his mouth full of tongue, and he figured it out.

Lucius liked that idea. _Really_ liked that idea.

Harry smiled, and let Lucius help him undress.

It had been so long since something like this happened, and Lucius seemed to misunderstand. He trailed his fingers gently along over Harry’s collarbones and shook his head. “I will not hurt you,” he murmured.

“I know. I’m—this is excitement, Lucius. Not fear.”

Lucius’s lips lifted gently. “The thought of being with me is that pleasant?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry said, and leaned in to kiss him, moaning slightly even before their mouths touched. Lucius was someone he had never envisioned being with before the last few months, but he had gone out of his way to help Harry, and worked with him on improving his Potions skills, and helped Harry study his family history in a way that let him feel connected to the wizarding world instead of having that connection overshadowed by his parents’ deaths, and…

And he was attractive. Harry had admitted that much to Ron the day Lucius moved in.

A hint of future trouble flickered like a flame in the back of Harry’s brain, worry that people might think Lucius was corrupting Harry or something equally ridiculous, but he couldn’t worry about it for long, not when Lucius was proceeding to melt his brain again. He leaned back on the couch and let Lucius take control.

First, Lucius raised the fire high enough with waves of his wand that there was no way he could mistake Harry’s shivering for being cold. Then he bent down next to him and began to kiss his way determinedly across every inch of Harry’s skin. Harry reached for him many times, but Lucius’s hands held his firmly down, and finally Harry had to lean his head back and just give in.

It was quiet and warm enough in the room that Harry could catch every single tone of his own breathless gasps and the quick sound of Lucius’s tongue on his scars, his muscles, his thighs. Harry parted his legs and tried to make an encouraging noise that emerged nowhere near as softly as he’d thought it would. He felt Lucius smile into his skin, and then he wrapped his lips around the skin near Harry’s cock and sucked.

“Lucius!”

“I am here,” he got back, but still no lips wrapped around him. Instead, Lucius finished kissing his way down Harry’s legs and around the curve of his ankles, and then he pulled back and let his unbound hair trail down Harry’s feet.

Harry looked at him, knowing his eyes must look dazed. Lucius didn’t seem to object to it, though, if the slight smile on his face was any indication. He pulled back further, but only long enough to cast charms that Harry welcomed with another gasp. He had already waited long enough. He didn’t want to wait while Lucius stretched him with his fingers and washed him out.

Someday soon, perhaps. But not now.

Lucius cast one final charm that made his cock glisten as if with potion, and then he lengthened the couch with another wave of his wand. Finally, he put the wand down and got his hands back on Harry’s skin where they belonged. As he slid them under Harry’s hips, Harry smiled up at him and murmured, “Thank you. I really am—fond of you, you know.”

“I know. And I imagine that most other words can wait right now,” Lucius added, and slid into him.

Harry ended up having to relax his muscles one by one from their first startled, instinctive tightening. Lucius stroked his stomach with gentle fingers, which helped. “Did I hurt you?” Lucius asked, quietly.

“No. It’s—been a long time since I’ve done this with someone.” Harry opened his eyes again and smiled up at him through the golden haze of firelight. “Please, Lucius, move now.”

Lucius was probably giving him a smug look about that confession of it having been a long time since Harry had done this, but Harry couldn’t see it anyway in the light hovering around his face. He reached up and kissed him, long and slow enough that Lucius murmured in pleasure and flexed his hips. Harry gasped as he was abruptly reminded that someone was _inside_ him.

“Yes. Please. Please.”

He probably sounded like an incoherent, babbling fool, but at least Lucius didn’t make him wait. He began to rock into Harry, and Harry clutched at the couch and his arms and his hair and at what sometimes felt like the firelight, urging him on with nonsense words. Lucius responded with softer sighs, with murmurs of pleasure, with tightening of his hips and the pounding of his body.

He was _there_ , in a way no one had been in so long. Harry loved his friends and held them inside his heart at all times, but someone inside both his heart and his body…

He came with another gasp at the thought, and Lucius bent down and shuddered over him, hips working desperately. When _he_ came, Harry shivered in delight and reached up to rake his fingers through Lucius’s hair. Lucius nodded at him, his head drooping. Harry drew Lucius down to rest his face in Harry’s shoulder.

It was a long time before Lucius stirred, and Harry reluctantly let him up. Lucius gave him a slight frown as he stood. “Am I not crushing you?” he murmured. “With all my weight on you as you lay on a couch not designed for such things.”

Harry hid his laughter at how formal Lucius sounded even after lovemaking. He would probably take it the wrong way right now. He shook his head. “No. It was wonderful.” He kissed Lucius again and reached for his wand to perform the charms that would clean him up.

“Let me do that for you.”

Harry hesitated, then lay back and let Lucius cast the charm. He sighed as it whispered over his skin. It felt warm in a way that his own magic never managed. As warm as a bath, as warm as—

He turned abruptly and looked at the fire. It was sinking calmly into normal embers, not the magical putting-out that he’d had to resort to in the past. He shook his head slowly. “We did it,” he whispered. “This house is a home.”

Lucius stiffened for a moment, and then laid his wand aside. “I suppose, then,” he said, his voice hideously cool when he was still leaning his hand on Harry’s bare shoulder, “that you will want to live here alone again.”

“I said _this_ house, not _my_ house,” Harry said, and turned around. “I consider it both of ours. Honestly, for a pompous pure-blood, sometimes you're really bad at the nuances of language.”

Lucius ignored the jab, staring at Harry with widened eyes. “You do mean that.”

“I do.” Harry twisted his head enough to kiss the hand on his shoulder. “It wouldn’t be a home without you. I’d probably have to just have you back again in a month. Or this place would burn down, too, and I’d rather not deal with that for the second time in a year, thank you—”

The rest of his words got lost as Lucius kissed him, furiously, frantically. Harry wound his hands in Lucius’s hair and happily held on. Lucius shivered above him and then reached out and stroked drying sweat from Harry’s side.

“We could go upstairs and I could show you how comfortable my bed is, perhaps,” Lucius murmured.

Harry remembered the enormous bed that Lucius had floated through the house on the day he moved in, and snorted. “You brought one that big on purpose, didn’t you?”

“I always sleep in a bed that size,” Lucius said haughtily, and then gave a faint smile. “Not that I might not have considered your comfort as well, and the possibility of sharing.”

Harry smiled at him, let Lucius pull him to his feet, and kissed him again. Then they walked up the stairs together, the light of the fire slowly fading behind them.

**The End.**


End file.
